Cooking Matters: Operation Food Search

During the growing season, every Monday brings a box of surprises for the Cooking Matters staff at Operation Food Search. That’s when we get our weekly donation of produce from EarthDance Organic Farm School. We eagerly await the EarthDance pick-up and anticipate what might be included in the bounty, because whatever we get will be put to use in that week’s Cooking Matters classes.

Cooking Matters is a hands-on food skills education class offered through Operation Food Search to kids, teens, and adults in low-income communities within the St. Louis metro area.  Although our youth participants tend to call it “cooking class,” the program consists of much more. Sure, we teach a variety of cooking techniques and cook a full meal every time we meet, but every Cooking Matters class also involves discussion and activities regarding healthy eating, grocery shopping, menu planning, food safety, and how to make cooking and eating together a family affair.

For many of our participants – the young ones in particular – learning new ways to enjoy healthy food also means trying lots of new things. We do a lot of tasting, and our “fruit and veggie taste test” activity is especially fun when we use produce from EarthDance. From the exotic to the everyday, all of the taste test items become more exciting once the participants hear that they were grown and harvested so close to home. Being able to tell the kids in my class that the turnip or tomato they are tasting was grown in Ferguson by people who put a lot of time and effort into that vegetable’s existence also helps to drive home the reason we don’t call food “nasty” in Cooking Matters: someone put labor, love, patience, money, and energy into everything we taste, and someone (at the very least, the instructor) enjoys eating it!

That same excitement about and respect for food translates into extra enthusiasm in the kitchen among all of the age groups we work with. A class of adult gardeners were eager to learn how to use the okra provided by EarthDance in a hearty Barley Jambalaya. The kids at Lexington Elementary were fascinated by the different sizes and shapes of eggplant they had to slice for a dish they called “Ratatootie.” When we received a random assortment of summer veggies, young mothers at Almost Home got to learn how you can put anything, even those crazy purple long beans, into a stir fry! And the parents of Urban League Head Start were just as surprised and intrigued by the white sweet potatoes they incorporated into their Turkey Tacos as they were by the fact that there is actually a farm in Ferguson. The list of delicious meals our participants have been able to prepare and enjoy together thanks to EarthDance goes on and on.

Thanks, EarthDance for keeping our produce selection not only healthy, affordable, and delicious, but also seasonal, local, and surprising! The produce you provide us with gets kids, teens, adults, and Cooking Matters instructors alike truly excited about cooking and eating vegetables. Being able to use ingredients that were grown so nearby and with so much love helps strengthen the connection between our class participants and the food that we cook and eat together, and there is no aspect of a Cooking Matters class that is more important than this. Thank you for helping the Cooking Matters program at Operation Food Search share skills, knowledge, and delicious food with the kids, teens, and adults we serve.

If you would like to learn more about the Cooking Matters program at Operation Food Search and how you can become involved contact Becky Reinhart at (314)726-5355 x 27 or by email at cm.americorps@operationfoodsearch.org.